What to expect from the Florida primary

Newt Gingrich's victory in South Carolina looked as if it could reset the Republican primary race. But the day of the Florida primary has arrived, and Gingrich does not appear to have retained that momentum.

It's essentially a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and Gingrich, as the two other candidates, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and Texas congressman Ron Paul, have chosen not to campaign in Florida -- a notoriously expensive state. They are planning to conserve resources for other caucuses where they are more likely to win delegates.

While the polls have shown a broad range of results in the Sunshine State ahead of today's poll, Mitt Romney emerges at the clear favourite. A Quinnipiac University poll out yesterday gave him 43 per cent to Gingrich's 29, while a separate poll from Marist University and NBC News gave them 42 and 27 respectively. A Suffolk poll at the weekend gave Romney a 20 point lead.

This is hardly surprising, given Romney's far superior organisation, funding, and staffing. His team has spent more than $14m on television advertising in Florida, primarily attacking Gingrich. By contrast, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives spent around $3m.

Romney's tone over the past few days has reflected this. He has been increasingly confident, telling a crowd of supporters: "I'm beginning to think we might win tomorrow."

Gingrich, on the other hand, told a rally that "we are pitting people power versus money power", as his chances of winning the nomination and becoming the frontunner dwindle. However, he sounded a defiant note in a television interview, when he said that "in the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate ... a liberal Republican."

The crucial factor is the size of Romney's victory. While a double figure win could be difficult for Gingrich to come back from, if it is five points or less, and some late polls (including Insider Advantage) suggest it could be, then that could be spun as a big positive for the former Speaker, given his opponent's superior resources. The demographic of the vote split will also be relevant. As Rebecca Lloyd explained on the Star Spangled Staggers last week, Florida is an exceptionally diverse state. If Gingrich wins among poorer voters and Tea Party supporters, he can still sell himself as the candidate of the right-wing, depicting Romney as a moderate appealing to elites and centrists.

Florida, which defied party rules to move up its primary in the nomination schedule and lost half its 99 delegates as punishment, is not going to be a "decider" state. While a victory for Romney here looks overwhelmingly likely, as Nate Silver explains on the Five Thirty Eight blog, he is still vulnerable in several of the states voting in February. A Romney win will set the candidate back on course and cement his frontrunner status, but it does not mean that the battle with Gingrich is necessarily over.

On Tuesday night, Abdalaziz Alhamza, from the Syrian campaign organisation Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), received the prestigious Marie Colvin Award at the British Journalism Awards on behalf of the group.

RBSS has been reporting from the northern Syrian city, Islamic State's de facto capital, since 2014 on the violence carried out both by the extremist group and the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The independent organisation comprises 18 journalists based in Raqqa who are supported by 10 more journalists, who publish and translate their findings between Arabic and English, and help their reports reach a wider global audience. The RBSS Twitter feed has almost 70,000 followers, and their Facebook page has over 560,000 likes, marking them as a major news source for the area.

Speaking at the British Journalism Awards on Tuesday, Alhamza said: “In 2014, we realised two important things: the first is that the outside world was not going to help us, and the second is that we had to do something. Anything. So we created RBSS.”

Alhamza further explained the campaign group's aims:

“Our goal was not only to expose IS criminality, but also to resist them. We did that by capturing and distributing images and videos of life in Raqqa under IS.”

“My colleagues and I never thought or even could imagine the level of suffering our people has been subjected to in the last five years. We learned the hard way that freedom doesn’t come cheap.”

“The scenes of extreme violence and humiliation the group visited on our city’s people. We wanted to make sure the world – even if it wasn’t going to help us – knew what was going on.

Though constantly living under threat, Alhamza’s speech last night showed the pride and importance that RBSS place on publishing the horrors of daily life within Syria.

“Our work shows that we can fight arms with words, and that ultimately is the only way to defeat them, and IS knows it.